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Characterization And Geochemistry Of Carbonate Caprock Associated With The Gypsum Valley Salt Wall, Paradox Basin, Colorado: Implications For Understanding Lateral Caprock Emplacement, Piper Lee Poe

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

On the northeastern side of Gypsum Valley salt wall in the Paradox Basin of Colorado, discontinuous exposures of layered gypsum and carbonate rocks were previously mapped as the contact between diapiric Paradox Formation and marine limestone of the Pennsylvanian Honaker Trail Formation. Utilizing new and existing mapping, petrographic and isotopic geochemical analyses, this study reinterprets this zone to represent lateral gypsum and carbonate caprock that formed in the Triassic during passive rise of the Gypsum Valley salt wall. Gypsum Valley lateral carbonate caprock can be distinguished from Pennsylvanian and Permian depositional carbonate strata exposed elsewhere on the salt wall by …